

9 years ago
6
Laser can 'disable self-drive car'
A homemade gadget can disable the systems that allow self-driving cars to see where they are going, a security researcher has said. Jonathan Petit demonstrated how a modified, low-cost laser could create ghostlike objects in the path of autonomous cars. The cars slowed down to avoid hitting them. If enough phantom objects were created, the car would stop completely, Mr Petit told tech magazine IEEE Spectrum.
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Well, you know, you can throw a fucking empty box out in front of a self-driving car and it will stop the same way. and save yourself 60 pounds. This is a silly "attack".
It's pretty easy to fix, too. Just have the lidar frequency hop and filter out anything that is outside of the hop. We figured that out back in WW2.
Empty boxes? Not so much. Car would stop anyway. Which it should.
Also, we can disable "humans" by pointing the laser at their eyes as well. Nothing really changes here, pointing lasers are anything moving is and should be illegal...
Yep. I know it's pretty damned illegal in the states. Unsure about CA, but I'm sure there's going to be some statutes on the books for it. There's several videos on youtube where cops hunt down and arrest assholes with laser pointers.
I believe it's illegal to point lasers into the sky as well, here in the States.
Pretty much. I've seen a few people taking this article as "proof" that self-driving cars are a disaster waiting to happen, but there's pros and cons to every system. Our current cars have a slew of things that could go wrong.
exactly man. Toyota learned that the hard way with bunches of older people cheerfully driving their cars into various other solid objects, much to their dismay.
I love the idea of self-driving cars. However, until the automotive industry puts on it's big boy pants and uses the same trusted design methodology that the airline industry uses, it will always be a game of cat and mouse.